In front of a group of complete strangers, my three year old daughter stood gleefully screaming a verse she had just learned the night before. Fearless, she continued to participate with this group of children she had never even met before despite weekly meltdowns of not wanting to participate in her own class at home. And…
Sitting in my 9th grade English class, our teacher explained that his biggest fear was not dying, but not being remembered after he was gone. It struck such a nerve in me that I have never forgotten those words. Similarly, I was recently walking through Downtown Boston when I saw the grave of Mary Chilton…
Driving long distances with young children can be exasperating, from “Are we there yet?”, to the bickering and fighting among siblings. I came up with a simple yet effective way to minimize behavior problems one summer while planning a trip from Oklahoma to Florida.
Life with toddlers is difficult isn’t it? The precious little babe you once had is now a tantrum-filled toddler that seems to rage at what seems like nothing. Each day is new, beautiful, and a little bit scary. And maybe what worked yesterday is falling flat today so you feel like you’re troubleshooting toddlerhood and…
My oldest is currently two and a half. She is working towards discovering her independence, but she is also struggling with not feeling confident enough or with getting frustrated. I know that this is just the first stage in her life where she will feel like she cannot conquer a task she is trying. However,…
Even great parents have to ask hard questions about child abuse. It’s important to keep our kids safe with both those we know and those we don’t. And it’s an open-ended conversation that we should all be having even though it seems to be a taboo subject. This is all about tools to think about…
In raising our children, there are inevitable moments we must start telling a child no. But there are actually easy ways to say yes, but mean no in the effort to start parenting with positive phrasing and without always saying no.
I whispered under my breath to myself “gah, you can’t even get your kids to listen to you”. It was a self-deprecating moment as my three-year-old and I were butting heads. It had been a long day and while I thought maybe we were making a breakthrough past her epic tantrum and meltdown, she refused…
((scoooooot, draaaagggg, BANG!)) We heard the wooden step stool being heaved and hauled across the kitchen floor as we sat in the living room. My husband asked my three-year-old to grab his drink that he had placed in the top part of the freezer. She was on a mission to not disappoint.
Every parent’s worst nightmare is that their kid will start melting down in public. But it’s pretty much inevitable that one day your beloved child will shrill to the high heavens, lose their mind, and fall prostrate on the floor flailing their arms and legs without control. And you will slowly die inside. And panic. And…
We take it for granted, but our kids really do see the world differently than we do. So when my three year old announces that she was a little chicky hatching from a shell, she saw the white blanket with gray stripes as a cracking egg. And when she told me she wanted me to…
I am so excited to introduce the Extremely Good Parenting Podcast! Happy Leap day. I always wanted to have a baby on February 29th because it would be the world most awesome birthday, but since that’s hard to predict and make happen, my podcast baby is born today.